2016 Hopes and Desires

I won't use resolutions or goals - those words have never worked for me in the past!

Eat cleaner
Don't buy lunch at work
Walk more steps and track them
Weigh myself every day
Drink  more water
Go out to eat less often
Do more physical activity besides running
Be more present for my kids
Be wiser with my $
Cook/prepare a bigger variety of foods

Goals are supposed to me measurable and I don't want to measure - Yes I want to weigh myself more often and keep track of my steps, but I am not saying I will run X# of miles or lose X# of pounds.

I do want to try tracking my food (I need to re-calculate the new WW points for my favorite foods)

But I don't want the pressure of a # (I may re-consider the running # because that does help keep me motivated).

I want to go into our cruise in 106 days feeling good about myself - no, I won't be at a weight I want to be at, but as long as I am out of the 200s and have made an effort, that will be good. If I had to go tomorrow, one I wouldn't have a lot of clothes to wear and 2, I wouldn't want many pictures taken of me - sucks for a trip we are spending a ton of $ on.

2015 was a bad, bad year. I'm am hoping 2016 will be better!

2015 Recap

This is not a post I wanted to write, because, well, 2015 for the most part sucked. I shouldn't say that, January was really good. I ate well, I ran a ton, we thought my Dad would live another 18 months, and then February came and it all went to crap. The snow came, the running did not, my dad's health took a nose-dive and I spent every Sunday visiting him and saying good-bye each time, and until then none of my weight-gain had been attributed to grief (the 8 lbs I had gained were 4 lbs the 2 weeks after my 1/2 and 4 lbs at Disney, none of which came off).

The negatives (in addition to the obvious big one - my dad dying)

I gained a ton of weight (to the tune that the scale said 211 yesterday)

I didn't cook anything new or good

We ate out way too much (too much $ and too many calories)

Coming home at 2:30 starting in September was not good for my waistline

I ran a lot during the week, but not a lot on the weekends and those long runs were not good runs

I had to bag out of more races than I ran due to weather, my own illness, and kid's illness

Besides running, I didn't do anything else to move my body (no biking, strength training, swimming, etc)

I didn't spend enough time on my own hobbies

We spent more $ than we should have 

I didn't hit my goal of 500 miles

The positives

We traveled a lot

We were able to do a lot more with the kids 

I ran 38 more miles than last year (438)

Here is to a better 2016 - tomorrow I will write about my hopes for 2016 (I won't say resolutions!)

 

Here are pictures from the year - there aren't a ton of me, because weight gain = me hating to have my picture taken

 

 

Our typical New Year's Eve shennanigans

My typical way of starting out the New Year - the other 2 ladies both ran marathons in the spring - more power to them - something I have zero desire to do!

I ran a ton in January and then it started to snow and snow and snow

But New England had something to celebrate

I ran the BAA 5k in April - slower than the year before, which was my first sign that weight gain really does make you slower

Easter is a time of rebirth even though we knew a life would soon end

And it did - this is me, my mom, my brother, and my kids at my dad's burial in June

Because I didn't want to sit around and mourn my dad, we saw every New England state, plus New York. This was my favorite weekend - Maine.

I ate lobster

And I ran 

And I relaxed (this is actually New Hampshire)

My daughter ran her first 5k in September

We enjoyed the fall

I ran after thanksgiving

And we enjoyed Star Wars and Christmas

Indulgent Christmas Weekend

Saturday December 12 I did go to WW to learn about the new SmartPoints. I had lost almost 4 lbs that week!! I was so the normal leader wasn't there - the sub was the leader we had had at Work in the past and I am not a big fan.

All Saturday afternoon was spent at a friend's holiday party. I tried to eat okay, but it really wasn't easy. I had a couple of glasses of wine early in the afternoon, but then changed to water because I thought I would be running the next day.

Sunday I had hoped to do 7 miles on my own starting at 6:30 am - We had to leave the house by 9:00 and I needed to shower and get all dressed up, so I knew I was cutting it really close. I woke up at 5:30 and just kept waiting for it to get light enough. The weekend before I had run with my group at 6:30 and felt like it was doable to do on my own. But the 7 days seemed to make a difference and with it being cloudy there was just no light. I didn't feel comfortable doing it on my own, so I bagged it. I could have started later and gone less miles, but I had it in my mind what I wanted to do and I didn't want to change it - need to work on that!

We went to the Boston POPs Christmas concert - it was so much fun. We got food at the event and then went out for a late lunch after. None of it was healthy!

During the week there was a lot of baking done and dinners were pretty disorganized.

I had every intention of going to WW on Saturday, but we just had way too much to do, so Friday night I decided I would skip it. I hated doing it, but it made our Saturday run much more smoothly.

We finally told the kids about our cruise in April, then went to see Star Wars, and then went out to a Japense Hibachi place for dinner. Nothing healthy about it!

Sunday I was supposed to do a holiday 5K with my running group, but my daughter woke up at 4 am with a sick stomach so I was up for 2 hours and exhausted, so went back to sleep and skipped the race. That is my story of 2015 - I think I have had to skip more races/races cancelled (for a variety of reasons: weather, Dad's death, me being sick, kids being sick) than I actually ran :(

Sunday was more poor eating. I am really going to try to eat better the next 3 days so I can enjoy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and then get back on track - no waiting until New Year's - though our New Year's Eve is not healthy!

Good choices on Thursday

Thursday I made some good choices and some not so great choices, but I was fairly conscious with my poorer choices.

Wednesday night me and the kids made Tollhouse cookies, the majority of them to be frozen for Santa. I only had a tiny, tiny bit of batter. Win in my book!

Thursday morning I ran almost 4 miles - even extending my run as the rest of the group was only running 3 that day.

Thursday I worked from home in the morning and we had a hectic afternoon. I ate my normal meals, even including lunch (where normally I would have made 2 boxes of Mac and Cheese with the kids and eaten 1/2 of it myself).

We had parent/teacher conferences, after which we came back before heading to the Mall.  Not knowing when we would eat, I did have some not-so-healthy snacks before leaving - 3 cookies and some Chex Mix (with the cashews removed).

I passed up free samples at the Lindt store (as well as the ton of Lindt my husband brought home!)

We went to the Cheesecake Factory for a very early dinner (like 4 o'clock early!) - I had water, passed on the bread because I don't love their bread, and had a appetizer version of a chopped salad (probably still had 1000 calories!) and summer rolls. And we all passed on dessert. I got into bed at 10 and realized I was starving - of course I was, I hadn't eaten in 6 hours! But I went to bed.

So some very conscious decisions made :)

Very bad, but getting better.....

I ended up going to Weight Watchers through October 17th, but then stopped until last weekend and when I returned on 12/5/2015 I had gained 9 lbs (in less than 2 months) so I was also in a new decade of weight, and not in a good way :(

I am not surprised that I gained so much weight, but very, very mad. The gain was due to eating lunch at work a lot, which included a 12 oz can of regular coke. But we were also eating out a lot. My father dying awarded us a little extra money and because we were so busy and stressed, it was easiest to go out a lot. And during these meals out I was having alcohol, which I hadn't really had much of in years. It tastes great but not good for the waistline or wallet.

In gaining 30 lbs since 9/20/2014 I have miraculously not gone up a size (I was just barely getting into a size 14 so very quickly last year they didn't fit, but it wasn't like I had gotten rid of my 16). But now I am to the point where the size 16 are starting to feel snug. And there is NO way I was going to buy new clothes. And we are going on this very nice, very expensive vacation in April and while I can't lose all the weight I've regained, I can do a lot in 4 months to make myself feel a lot better about myself.

I didn't realize Weight Watchers was changing their program when I returned but I am very excited. I've read some people's opinions on-line. I need the incentive to eat less sugar and less saturated fat. Less sugar = less belly fat which will help me tremendously.

I think I am going to step back from running just a little. I strongly believe in less sleep = weight gain. Getting up at 4:30 am Tues/Thurs was taking a toll on me. I don't want to stop running all together and I don't want to just run 1x a week, so I am going to try dropping my Tuesday am run and just run Thursday am (4 miles) and then a "long run" (6-8 miles) on Sundays.

I have had a hard time losing weight while doing a lot of exercising, so that is why I need to step back a little bit. But I also have to get better at moving during the day.

I have a folder on my hard drive which I have "Pictures of Me" going back to high school. I added tons of pictures when I was losing weight and I looked at it a lot because it also had my "before pictures". And I was looking at pictures from our Christmas card photo shoot (at home with the timer) and I came across a picture of me that was awful and went to add it to this folder and realized I hadn't added any pictures in a year. Part of it was that there aren't a ton of pictures of me in the last year because as I was re-gaining weight, I no longer wanted pictures taken of me. And the few pictures I do have, I didn't want to add to this folder.

But I went through the last year, added all the pictures of me regardless of how bad, and now I am moving forward towards wanting to have tons of pictures taken of me. While I need to lose weight for long term for me health, the immediate reason is to like the pictures of me come April because we are spending a ton of money and I want to have beautiful photographic memories.